Eating Eurovision – Greece and Ukraine
A few weeks ago, following a very successful bloggers visit to Tayabb’s, the idea of Eating Eurovision was born. The premise was simple: could 25 food bloggers eat the cuisine of the 25 partaking countries, all within the M25, within 25 hours? This was not to be an exercise in Googling recipes and cooking the dish of your country in the comfort of your own home but an opportunity to investigate the community and converse with the locals.
So, on Thursday night, we trooped en masse to the BBC Television Centre where we sat down to watch the last semi-final and conduct the big draw. After an entertaining (although sometimes painful) couple of hours, the final nine names were announced and we got on with the business of drawing names (ping-pong balls) from a hat (trendy cotton shopping bag). We drew Greece and the Ukraine.
In Greece, we were fairly confident and our research showed us that Palmers Green was were it was at. On arrival, we were lucky enough to meet Sue at the Lefteris Bakery who told us that the bakery had been under current management for 15 years. She doesn’t live in the area anymore, having moved out to Cockfosters but confirmed that there were still a great many Greek families living locally, mostly because there were so many facilities available to them locally (we spotted a bakery, butcher, patisserie, social club and many restaurants, all within a few minutes walk of each other). After purchasing some baklava we asked Sue where she ate with her family, she recommended Spitiko which was just down the road.
On entering Spitiko, we were greeted by Andy and Stellios who, while slightly bemused, were both happy to answer our stream of questions. Stellios has been running Spitiko for nine years but has been living in the area for the last 40, having originally arrived in London to study. He explained that many Greeks have now moved away from the area; some, like Sue, moving further out to Cockfosters and Southgate but many returning to Greece. He was very proud of the restaurant and the food they served which he told us was nothing like the new stream of Greek restaurants that have opened up recently. These, according to Stellios, are all run by Greek wives who are not chefs and believe that making kebabs is all there is to Greek food. His language started to get more colourful at this point but I’ll gloss over that and tell you about the food.
Conscious of the crossover between Greek and Cypriot food, we were keen to make sure we really were eating the cuisine of our Eurovision country. Andy told us that there wasn’t really much difference between the two and that back in Greece, the cuisine was pretty similar all over the country. Not wanting to disagree, we decided on a selection of mezze, followed by one main course to share. We bravely ordered some Greek wine too which was actually fairly drinkable. We started with a familiar selection of hummus, halloumi, calamari and dolmades which was all very fresh and well cooked. The main course of lamb souvla was interesting, spit roasted lamb ribs served with roast potatoes. The meat was tenderand had taken on a wonderful smokiness from the charcoal grill.
After our big fat Greek lunch we were feeling rather sleepy, which threw our Ukrainian exploits off course a little. Conveniently, one of Stephen’s cousins has a Ukrainian girlfriend, Nataliia, who we interrogated briefly. She assured us that the “most common and best” Ukrainian food is golubtsi… more on that later.
We managed to get a bus to East Finchley on the way back from Palmers Green where we visited Dacha, which calls itself a “Russian and Ukrainian Delicatessen Shop”. We wandered in and were greeted in Russian by the lady running the shop. We smiled and nodded and said “hello”, which made her look rather surprised; it was obvious that we were the foreigners in this particular context. We started browsing, without really knowing what we were looking for, but were hoping that it would jump out at us when we found it.
There were quite a variety of foods, including frozen dumplings of various sorts, biscuits, lots of pickles and relishes and other jars, along with some freshly made, refrigerated dishes. After a few minutes of browsing, we were having trouble identifying which were Ukrainian rather than Russian (or Lithuanian or Estonian, which were mentioned on a lot of labels and would have been easier) so clearly we needed to ask the lady for some help. Or so we thought. She replied, saying “I’m sorry, I don’t speak English” in perfect English. If you don’t speak English then you probably get quite practiced at saying that particular phrase, but it can be rather odd to hear it pronounced so well. She did try to help, but we completely failed to to make ourselves understood – no amount of pointing and saying “Ukraine” was met with anything other than shrugs of incomprehension.
Luckily at this point another customer arrived and spoke Russian to the lady running the shop, so we asked her if she spoke English (which she did, thankfully) and asked if she minded translating a few things for us (which she didn’t, thankfully). Having broken through the communication barrier, we were eventually shown to several Ukrainian foods, including chocolates, biscuits on a string, and a couple of the pre-prepared, refrigerated dishes which looked promising. One of which was the golubtsi that we’d been told was the “best” Ukrainian food, so that was a breakthrough at least. Another was a very mayonnaisey olivje salad. We decided to buy some chocolates and biscuits and also ingredients to make up the olivje and golubtsi ourselves. There were a couple of curious bottles of Ukrainian dessert wine on display, but weren’t priced and we didn’t think we particularly needed it anyway, but should at least have taken a picture of them, which we didn’t.
We had planned to visit the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain (located in Notting Hill) on the way home, but time had been getting away from us and the Greek food and wine was taking its toll, making us nod off on the Tube on the way. Luckily we were awake at the important changing points, so we did eventually make it home. We called the AUGB and asked them a few questions – we were put through to The Librarian who suggested that we come down to The Library and have a look at the books there for information. But we couldn’t fit that in, so not a lot of background history, sorry.
So, back to the food. For both of the dishes, recipes vary from place to place and family to family of course. The general recipe for olivje salad is fairly simple: Take cooked potato, cooked carrot, boiled egg and cooked sausage and chop these up into similarly sized pieces, roughly centimetre cubes. Add some cooked peas, mayonnaise and salt to taste. Mix together. Eat. This is similar to the Russian Salad that is always to be found on the menu in tapas bars; I’ve ordered it several times and always enjoy the first mouthful but after that find the overbearing mayonnaiseyness too much to handle. The olivje in the Russian and Ukrainian Delicatessen Shop had also been heavy on the mayonnaise, so our version probably wasn’t authentic, but I did eat the lot and rather enjoyed it.
Making golubtsi involves making a meat and rice filling, then wrapping this in cabbage leaves and stewing / steaming this in stock or tomato juice. The similarity between this and the dolmades that we’d had for lunch was not lost on us. We mixed pork mince with rice, onion, tomato paste and parsely and then wrapped this mixture in blanched cabbage leaves, cooking them in a mixture of beef stock and tomato puree. The tomato left strange-looking red lines around the golubtsi , but at least our rolling skills were just good enough for them to hold together during cooking. We were completely stuffed by this point, but just tasted a couple – they were nice but needed a bit more seasoning. And probably various accompaniments that Nataliia had told us about, e.g. sour cream, parsley and mixed salad.
We both knew a little about Greek cuisine before we embarked on Eating Eurovision but knew nothing about the Ukrainian community or their cuisine. While we didn’t manage to find out too much about how Ukranians live in the UK, we did at least learn that their food is similar to that of Russia and Latvia. Chatting to the Greek community in Palmers Green was really enjoyable and eating authentic food cooked by someone who cares is always a good thing. I’m glad we decided not to go to the Real Greek now.
One down side of all of this is that we really loved the hummus at the Greek restaurant. That doesn’t sound like a down side I know, but we tend to eat a fair amount of hummus at home and the lovely freshly made restaurant hummus was streets ahead of the supermarket hummus that we usually eat, thus effectively devaluing the pleasure from any at-home hummus-eating that we indulge in from now on. We’ll just have to start trying to make it ourselves until we can make it that well.
Wine and Cheese Tasting with Catavino
On Wednesday night, Stephen and I made the short trip to the Westbridge in Battersea for a complimentary evening of wine and cheese hosted by Charlie McVeigh (Westbridge owner and cheese provider) and Catavino (wine supplier).
It was a very informal evening and a great opportunity to meet new food and wine bloggers, the wine and cheese was pretty good too. There was a huge selection of wine on offer and, while we both made a valiant attempt at tasting all of it, we didn’t get through it all. Of those we did try, the ones that really stood out were the Chozas Carrascal sparkling wine and the Castro Martin Family Estate Albarino. Stephen’s notes are quite detailed on the cava detailing the toast, peach and vanilla nose and the earthy, lemon and green flavours in the mouth. My memory is less detailed but I remember the bubbles being long-lasting and there not being too much acidity (note to self: remember to leave wine write-ups to Stephen in future).
There were also a great number of cheeses but we didn’t manage to photograph them all, possibly because some arrived later in the evening after we had “tasted” a fair amount of wine. I’m certain we managed to try them all though and our favourites were the Tomette Agour Brebis du Pays (a hard sheep’s cheese from the Pays Basque) and the Tête de Moines (from the Bernese Jura), not least because of the Girole which was created especially to use with that particular cheese.
Alongside the cheese and wine, there was also some tea provided by The Rare Tea Company which I learnt was very useful in cleansing the palate in between wines. I have to admit to being a bit rubbish about tea, strong builders tea is all I really drink but it would never have occured to me that tea could be useful for anything other than being a great accompinament to toast before so this was a great lesson.
Sadly, we didn’t get the chance to eat any food from the Westbridge kitchen which might have explained the sore head the following day (as evidenced by the state of Stephen’s shirt in the first picture!). No such sore heads for the wine bloggers though who spent most of the next morning on Twitter teasing the food people for not utilising the spittoon.
Kastner and Ovens
Covent Garden isn’t particularly well known for it’s sandwich shops. I spent many a frustrated lunch time pounding the cobbled streets looking for something that wasn’t freezing cold (I’m looking at you, Pret) or covered in mayonnaise (I see you there, Marks and Spencer) until I realised that bringing in my own lunch was the only way to guarantee getting what I wanted. Until I stumbled upon Kastner and Ovens, that is.
Although better known locally for it’s hot food and fabulous cakes, they also carry a small range of sandwiches, bagels and rolls to take away which are freshly made just before the shop opens (there is one table where hungry customers can dine in but I’ve no idea how you bag that prized spot).
I used to subscribe to their daily email alert which would arrive around 10am telling me what was available for lunch that day. It was both a pleasure and a chore to read about their tagine, fish pie and casserole when all I had to look forward to was last night’s leftovers. Lasagne day was always the most challenging whereby I’d spend hours deliberating on whether to throw my planned lunch away and join the queue at 12pm sharp to guarantee my serving of meaty, cheesey goodness. There’s always a queue, even when it’s raining.
So, when Jonathan asked me if I wanted to take part in British Sandwich Week, I jumped at the chance and immediately thought of K&O, even though I don’t work in the area any more.
I’m a big fan of sandwiches but I’m also very fussy about them. The bread needs to be crusty, I like butter not margarine, a little salad is good, mayonnaise is very bad. I don’t like too many things happening in the sandwich and the bread to filling ratio is important.
Making my choice today was difficult, not because I wasn’t keen on the options but because I couldn’t make up my mind. I knew I was looking for a typically British sandwich which quickly ruled out the salami but should I go for beef or salmon? I went with the salmon in the end because the bread looked crunchier and I wasn’t disappointed. The bread was indeed crunchy and there was plenty of sweet, smoked salmon, just enough cream cheese and exactly the right amount of crunchy cucumber. For £3, it seemed like good value and it was definitely very fresh and much more exciting than anything else that was on offer nearby.
The Ultimate Chilli Con Carne
We’ve been using a variation of the same recipe for a long time, it’s a good dish but I always end up thinking it could be improved. Talking with a friend last week about the very same thing led to a huge chilli craving so, after some research, I thought I’d try some new ingredients and a different method.
4 tbsp olive oil
1 large habanero chilli, roasted, deseeded and pulped
4 garlic cloves, roasted and then pulped
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp chipotle chilli powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp smoked paprika
Glass red wine
1 large onion, finely chopped
500g lean minced beef
600ml beef stock
400g tin chopped tomatoes
2 tbsp tomato purée
Salt and pepper
Bay leaf
500g mixed beans
1 tsp cocoa powder
I started off by roasting the chilli and garlic in the over for about 30 minutes, on 190 degrees, before leaving them to cool down. Remove the seeds from the chilli and squash together with the garlic (I picked up this tip from Helen, thanks!.
At the same time, I roasted the coriander and cumin in a frying pan on a low heat, for about 10 minutes. Once they had cooled, I ground them up in the mortar and pestle and transferred them to a bowl where I mixed them with the other powdered spices.
While both these things were happening, I was also cooking the beans (soaked overnight) for 20 minutes, softening the onions with some salt and browning the seasoned meat. Lots of multi-tasking and many pots!
Once all the preperation was done, I started to put the dish together. So, I added the garlic and chilli pulp to the softened onions and let it cook together for a couple of minutes. Into this mixture went the powdered spiced which also cooked for a couple of minutes. I deglazed this mixture with some red wine and cooked for, yes, another couple of minutes.
Next, in went the browned meat, followed by the stock, tomatoes, tomato puree, more seasoning, the bay leaf, more seasoning and the beans. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer for three hours. After two and a half hours, add the cocoa powder. Cool, refrigerate and serve the next day.
We were both impressed with the way this turned out, it was hot but not so hot that the flavours didn’t all come through. It’s hard to tell exactly what made such a difference, since I’d used both different ingredients and a different method but I’ll definitely stick to this recipe in future. There was a strong, smoky flavour throughout the dish which is something that had been missing previously, adding the cocoa powder just before the end really seemed to help with the richness too. It didn’t add a sweetness which I would have liked, perhaps upping the cinammon would help next time.
Slow Roasted Shoulder of Mutton
On a recent trip to the Real Food Festival at Earl’s Court, we did manage to find a few interesting things in between pushing through crowds, avoiding random things in jars and being irritated by argumentative ladies selling wine. One of these interesting things was a rolled shoulder of mutton, which we bought as we had been talking about cooking mutton for a quite a while but hadn’t happened across any. The mutton was from Elan Valley in Wales and they also had a few other cuts, along with some “mutton ham” which I was keen to taste, but we had to evacuate the area before I managed to do so due to a stampede of baby strollers heading our way.
We had a quick look around the interwebs for a recipe and found this one by Mark Hix. Mark Hix is a decent chef and specialises in British food, both traditional and modern, so we figured he probably knows what he’s talking about when it comes to mutton. Something in this recipe must have been lost in translation (from English to English?) or we just got it completely wrong, because it turned out a bit strangely.
We started off by browning the meat as specified; that was easy. Then chopped the specified huge amount of onions and made up the specified huge amount of chicken stock, which are thickened with butter and flour to make a sauce. The meat goes into a casserole dish and this sauce is poured over it. I don’t know if we had the shoulder of a particularly diminutive sheep, but it just looked like it was swimming in chicken soup when we did this.
Anyway, into the oven it went for two hours. The recipe said to turn the meat every half hour, which we did, but I don’t think we really needed to as it was almost completely submerged the whole time. After the two hours, we took the meat out and let it rest while we reduced the sauce down a bit and seasoned and added the chopped chives to it. We sliced the mutton and served it with mashed potato and spring greens.
Now I rather liked the taste and texture of the mutton and thought that part worked pretty well. However, it you had any of the sauce with it then it tasted exactly like mutton that had accidentally fallen into a chicken casserole and there were no two ways about this. Which I’m sure wasn’t the intention of the recipe. So I’m not sure where we went wrong and I’ve gone over the recipe again to see if we got any ingredients and/or quantities wrong, but it all seems to be in order. Needless to say, next time we happen across some mutton (hopefully under less harried circumstances), we’ll cook it differently.
Breaded Veal with Asparagus and Sautéed Greens
Veal can be a contentious issue amongst food-lovers. And then there are the animal-lovers to consider too of course, but they tend to be a bit one-sided on this issue. However, for those of us who both love food and prefer to eat only ethically produced food, we are lucky that we can now buy British “rosé” veal, which is pink in colour and means that the calves have not been confined to small containers all their lives or fed iron- and fibre-deficient diets.
For many years I’ve maintained that “happy food is tasty food”, so am glad to find happy veal is becoming more widely available. Why they feel the need to market it as “rosé” veal is beyond me though; perhaps they think that French-sounding names for food are more likely to sound sophisticated and appeal to people more, which is ironic seeing that the British veal calves are raised to a much higher standard of welfare than those elsewhere in Europe.
Anyway, all that aside, Kerri bought a couple of slices of happy veal for dinner today. We breaded and fried these and served them with asparagus and sautéed spring greens, all of which turned out really well. The recipe for the veal went something like this:
Ingredients:
2 happy, pink veal escalopes
2 cups breadcrumbs
1 egg
flour
parsely
1 tsp Dijon mustard
salt and pepper
olive oil for frying (1-2 tbsps)
Method:
Place some flour onto a plate. Beat the egg, season it with salt and pepper and then mix the mustard into it and place it onto another plate. Finely chop the parsley, then mix it into the breadcrumbs on a third plate and season the breadcrumbs with salt and pepper too.
Have a fourth, empty plate waiting (this recipe is heavy on plates if you hadn’t realised yet). Pat the veal escalopes dry with some kitchen towel, then dust them with the flour, patting off any excess. Then dredge them in the seasoned egg mixture and finally put them onto the breadcrumb plate, coating them well with the crumbs and pressing the crumbs well into it to make them stick. Then set aside on the empty plate.
Heat some oil in a frying pan over medium heat and when it is hot, add the breaded escalopes. Fry for 2-3 minutes on one side, then turn over and cook on the other side for the same amount of time. You might need to add a little more oil when turning them over if all the initial oil has been absorbed into the crumbs.
Then eat them. We found these really delicious. The seasoned crumbs and mustard complemented the veal perfectly and the taste of the veal was strong enough to stand up to the flavours, which we were initially worried up. As mentioned above, we served them with simply steamed asparagus and some spring greens that were shredded and sautéed in butter and garlic.
Teriyaki Steak with Pea Shoot Salad
We’d originally planned a Thai-style stir fry for this evening but I couldn’t muster up much enthusiasm for it. I came across an idea for this dish while browsing online and was instantly more excited, not least because it included pea shoots. We haven’t cooked with them much before, bar one failed attempt to recreate a restaurant-style dish and using new ingredients is always much more fun than relying on tried and tested favourites.
We were both really pleased with how this turned out: the combination of mirin and soy sauce providing a really rich, earthy flavour while the mustard dressing lightened and lifted the whole dish. The delicate pea shoot flavour was a bit lost really but was definitely better than something like rocket which would have been too peppery, or general salad leaves which would have been lost even more.
Two steaks
1.5tbsp mirin
1.5tbsp Japanese soy sauce
1.5tbsp sake
2tbsp vegetable oil
Bag of peashoots
Four radishes, sliced
Two spring onions, sliced
1tsp English mustard
1tsp wholegrain mustard
½tsp sugar
1tsp wine vinegar
1tbsp vegetable oil
1tbsp water
Whisk the mirin, soy sauce and sake together.
Fry the steaks for 2-3 minutes per side. Remove from the pan and rest.
Pour off excess fat from the frying pan, then add the mirin, sake and soy sauce mixture. Bring to the boil and simmer for 2-3 minutes, until thick.
Return the steaks to the frying pan and cook for a further minute, continuously spooning the sauce over the steaks.
Mix the salad, combine the dressing, dress the salad, add the steak and serve.
Asparagus and Pancetta Risotto
Kerri and I were discussing risotto and she suggested putting asparagus into it, after which I suggested pairing the asparagus with chorizo. We do have rather a lot of pancetta and lardons in our rather small freezer though, so it made sense to use up one of those instead.
We started off in the usual way by softening some finely chopped onion, celery and garlic in olive oil, with the exception that we added the chopped pancetta too. Once this had had a few minutes, in went the rice for a while, stirring so that it didn’t stick, and then some wine and the first ladle of stock. Once the second ladle of stock had gone in, we added quite a lot of chopped sage. Later we added the chopped up asparagus stalks, and right near the end we added the asparagus tips and finally some pepper and a large handful of grated parmesan.
The result was really good – rich in flavour and creamy, but with defined texture still left in the rice grains. The stock that we used was home made chicken stock which we had made a while ago and frozen, which made a big difference but sadly that is all used up now. The sage was noticeable but melded into the background nicely.
We drank a South African Chardonnay with it, which was rich enough to stand up to the rich stock and parmesan and it also had a toasty note to it which would have really brilliantly with the risotto had we used smoked bacon in it.
Chorizo and Squid Salad
The friends that came to visit yesterday kindly bought an enormous chorizo with them. We ate some yesterday but had plenty left over so decided to use it in this salad that we originally saw on Something For The Weekend. It was really good, the capers and sherry vinegar cut through the oiliness of the chorizo really well.
Honey and Lemon Cake with Pistachios
The weather has been pretty miserable today and an afternoon in the kitchen seemed like the best way to make use of the Bank Holiday. I first tasted this cake a couple of weeks ago and have been eagerly awaiting the recipe ever since, luckily it turned up just in time.
280g unsalted butter, softened
Rind of 1 lemon, grated
440g golden caster sugar
6 eggs, beaten
170g sour cream
300g plain flour
35g self raising flour
1tsp baking powder
Juice of 1 lemon
80g pistachio nuts (original recipe stated pine nuts)
1tbsp demerara sugar
90g honey
Preheat oven to 170 degrees.
In a large mixing bowl, beat butter, lemon rind and sugar together until soft. Slowly add the beaten eggs ensuring that each addition is incorporated before adding more.
Stir in the sour cream.
In a separate bowl, combine plain flour, self raising flour and baking powder and add this a tablespoon at a time to the large mixing bowl.
Add the lemon juice and continue to mix until incorporated.
Transfer the cake mixture to a large, greased tin and bake in the oven for 15 minutes.
While the cake is baking, toast some pistachio nuts and leave to cool. Mix the cooled nuts together with the demerara sugar and set aside.
When the cake has cooked for the initial 15 minutes, remove from the oven and gently press in the nut and sugar mixture.
Bake for a further 45 minutes.
I had some trouble pushing the nut and sugar mixture down into the cake which meant that the nuts went rather brown. I’m not sure how to avoid this next time, perhaps add them later on. I don’t think the sugar was all that necessary either although I did use dark sugar rather than demerara which didn’t melt in the same way demerara would have done. My version was darker than the one I ate recently too which may be due to our oven.
It’s a good tasting cake though and the dampness means that it’s quite forgiving, even with our dodgy oven, it still didn’t dry out.
Remove cake from the oven and drizzle with the honey.
